# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1928_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20 Proceedings of the thirty-first convention

sin was reckoned to him, so that, so to speak, one saw nothing more in him
than guilt and transgression. Further, this teaches that Jesus bore the
punishment that our transgression had deserved. The words of Isaiah bring this
out clearly: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we
did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for
our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our
peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

Finally it is to be stressed that Jesus suffered and died as our substitute.
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us:
for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." So Paul writes.
We have called the curse down upon ourselves by our transgression of the Law.
Jesus now steps into our place and is cursed for us, in our stead. These are,
in brief words, the wonderful divine, blessed truths that meet us in the
contemplation of the Passion of our Savior. We call the obedience that Jesus
showed in his suffering and dying his suffering obedience, obedientia passiva.

Against this chapter, Jesus' vicarious suffering, there is now likewise much
talking and writing, and unfortunately also by people who still bear the name
of Christians and pretend to stand on the ground of Holy Scripture. It is a sad
piece of work to examine their vain grounds against this comforting truth more
closely. We can begin with what the professor at the Lutheran university at
Erlangen, von Hofmann, once advanced against it. This very theologian denies
absolutely that Jesus' suffering had a vicarious character. He admits that
Jesus suffered for us, namely for our good, but not that he went into death in
our place. Dr. Walther presents in his edition of Baier two quotations in which
von Hofmann sets forth his position. The latter writes, among other things:
"We have examined completely that part of the New Testament writings which
presents the death of Christ preeminently as a high-priestly performance and
sacrificial suffering, without finding in it what is peculiar to the view in
use since [!] Anselm, as distinguished from the result of our historical
discussion of it. According to the Epistle to the Hebrews also, Jesus' death
agony is not punishment, though a consequence of the sin of mankind; not to
wrath but to God's gracious will is satisfaction thereby made, only of course to
the latter in the way it had to be made after sin and death were in the world;
not in the place of mankind has Christ suffered, but for its benefit, in that
his experience was the performance of the mediator of salvation; and it is not
that sin is now correspondingly punished, but also not that it is atoned for by
Jesus' ethical action in suffering, that constitutes the essence of this
reconciliation, but that the fellowship of God and Jesus Christ, which came
about for the sake of our salvation, has proved itself even through the
extreme consequence of sin. . . . To be sure, it is quite properly a task of the
Epistle to the Hebrews to show that Jesus had to die. But the author does not
ground this necessity on the claim that God's punishing justice had to be
satisfied, but it grows directly out of the fellowship with mankind entered
into by Christ for the purpose of our redemption. As our mediator of salvation
he could not enter in to God otherwise than after having suffered also the
extreme,